


The Rainforest

by TheDragonQueen



Category: Wings of Fire - Tui T. Sutherland
Genre: Gen, Mother-Daughter Relationship, NightWings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-12
Updated: 2015-08-17
Packaged: 2018-04-14 06:40:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4554585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheDragonQueen/pseuds/TheDragonQueen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Moon's life in the rainforest, before the NightWing Exodus.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Mother

“Mother!”

Of course, Moon had known that her mother would visit her today.  She’d received a vision of it.  Of course, the vision had involved her mother falling asleep again, losing track of time.  And in these kinds of visions, a dragon always came looking for her.

So, Moon would have to make sure her mother stayed awake.  She didn’t like to.  After all, it was days like this when she really worried about the older dragon.  Days that Secretkeeper’s mind seemed a little more strained than usual.  Days where, when her mother was about to leave again, she gave the dragonet more warnings than normal.

Moon wasn’t aware of what her mother did when she left her alone, in the beginning.  Secretkeeper had kept her mind so muddled, Moon hadn’t been able to make sense of things at first, and her mother only ever told her that she was keeping her safe.

In the beginning, Moon hadn’t realized why her mother always left her alone.

She knew now, though.  As she grew, so did her power - her curse - and the more Secretkeeper couldn’t keep hidden from her.  Moon knew that the rainforest wasn’t her mother’s home, no matter how much she heard a little voice in her mother’s mind whisper that she should stay.  No matter how much Moon wanted to agree with that voice.  But now, she was aware of the volcano from which her mother came, and all the dangers there.  The stifling heat, the ashen sky, the other dragons.  Any dragons.

All of those memories were brushed out of both of their minds the instant Secretkeeper swept Moon up in her wings.  “Are you all right, my little Moon?”

“I’m fine, Mother.”  Moonwatcher wanted to burrow into the folds of her mother’s wings and stay in their warmth forever.  But at the same time, she also wanted to escape the darker thoughts that suddenly became so much louder the moment her mother held her so tight.  Not all of the thoughts were about her, but most of them were.  Moon knew her mother loved her, but Secretkeeper had a habit of worrying too much about too many things, none of them good.  Sometimes, even the thoughts meant to be loving and protective bit Moon like a bug worming its way beneath her scales.  Thankfully, Moon was learning to block out most of them.

For right now, though, she needed to get her mother’s mind off of her worries.  “I practiced my tree-climbing today.”  For a moment, Moon wanted to admit that she’d been watching the colorful dragons from a distance again; the ones Secretkeeper called RainWings.  But she knew revealing that would only make her mother worry more.  So, stumbling over her words, she passed over the fact.  “I-I’m much faster!”

“Mmm,” her mother hummed.  But it’d worked.  Now, the only thing Moon saw in her mother’s mind were fantasies of herself leaping and gliding through the trees.  It made her mother laugh with her pride.  “Very good.”

Moon knew that she only had a few hours to spend with her mother today.  She didn’t know how long exactly, only that her vision took place at dusk.  She still hadn’t eaten today, but she could always search the treetops for a few mangos after nightfall.

Right now, she wanted to spend all of her time in her mother’s embrace.


	2. Strangers

Moonwatcher carefully lowered herself through the branches of the tree, working her way down to the cluster of pink-skinned fruit hanging lightly off the leaves.  At times like this, she wished she had a tail like the colorful dragons she’s seen flitting across the treetops; long, thin, and dextrous enough to wrap tightly around a tree branch.

She didn’t though, and so she’d had to learn another, safer way of getting to the fruits that blossomed higher in the trees.  She was getting better at it, day by day.  Moon dropped to the next branch below and reached out, snatching the fruit from their leaves and leaping off to glide quickly away before she fell.  When she hit the air, she unfurled her wings just slightly to glide to another tree, one with larger branches on which she could properly perch.

Safely on her talons once more, Moon sliced the small pink things into thinner pieces.  These fruit had a crisply sharp sweetness to them that Moon sometimes enjoyed - particularly after a day Mother had visited.  She’d once overheard a RainWing call them jambu fruits.  She wanted to ask the other dragons why they called the fruit that, but knew she couldn’t.  She had to stay secret, hidden, and safe.  Just like her mother always told her.

_I never thought I’d hate mud, but this doesn’t feel right at all!_

Moon stiffened as the thought pierced her skull.  Who was that?  It didn’t feel like the mind of a RainWing, and they usually don’t complain about much from what Moon could tell.  There were strangers in the forest, unknown and unknowable.

_Visitors!_

That was what a RainWing’s mind felt like.  Acting quickly, Moon leapt from her branch, winging shortly down to the ground and in the opposite direction from where the thoughts were coming from.  There were plenty of hiding places on the ground and she had learned that RainWings rarely went as low as the very ground, though she was less sure of such a fact now that there were minds in the rainforest that were completely new to her.

Still, the best course of action was to hide.  And with her dark scales, there were plenty of places on the forest floor for the young NightWing to burrow into, unseen.  Eventually curling up into a bed of moss, Moon realized she’d dropped her fruit as she had been fleeing.  A moment later, though, she dismissed the concern.  After this, the sweetness of jambu fruits would hardly reduce her nerves.

After a few moments of stillness, she felt the RainWings get closer to the ‘visitors’ and, a second later, the two new minds fell into unconsciousness.  That was when, briefly leaning into the minds of the nearby RainWings, Moon learned about their blow darts and the tranquilizer stored in them.

Moon felt a shiver crawl down her spine.  She’d always been careful to steer clear when she felt the minds of RainWings nearby, but she had no idea that they had weapons like those.  What would they do to her if they ever caught her?  Unfortunately, her mother didn’t know very much about the RainWings, only that the NightWing tribe was studying them.

But one thing was for sure: Moon was beginning to feel a little less safe.  She should stick to her cave for the next few days, at least until these strange new dragons were out of the rainforest.


End file.
